Tasks or obligations in an application program environment typically depend on the specific application domain. Tasks or obligations may, for example, be the updating of a file in a database, entering a customer's details in the context of opening an account, approving or rejecting a credit application, or opening a legal case.
In the paper-based world, tasks are continuously created, delegated or discharged according to the overall goals of an organisation and the general principles governing the distribution of work within an organisation. These principles would typically comprise a framework for maintaining control over the supervision and responsibility of task completion.
Although workflow products (e.g., the SAP Webflow product), and non-workflow products (e.g., Outlook) support the delegation of tasks, the available delegation functionalities of these application programs are rudimentary. This lack of sophistication often results in uncertainty as to the person responsible for currently performing a task, the origin and ownership of the initial task and the delegation sequence of the task. It may further be difficult for a principal who delegated a task to find out whether a task has, in fact, been completed. Also, the present delegation functionalities provided by application programs may not provide the information required to identify the person who is ultimately responsible to ensure that each single operation in a task has been performed, and may not provide a system-enabled mechanism to handle a situation if each single operation in a task has not been performed.